Bring on the Robots: IT Professionals Welcome Automation

A new survey of IT professionals gives us a better sense of what the future workplace will be like, when “software robots” are expected to handle routine and tedious IT and business processes.

And according to these workers, the emerging era of robotic process automation (RPA) will actually deliver more job satisfaction. The survey of 194 IT professionals conducted by Spiceworks on behalf of automation solution provider Arago, revealed that a clear majority believe that smart automation tools and artificial intelligence (AI) will free up more time for enjoyable tasks at work — intellectually stimulating learning and development activities and the pursuit of strategic initiatives, for example.

Ninety-three percent of the workers surveyed said they did not believe automated IT tools would put their jobs at risk. Eighty-eight percent believe automation helps free up their time so they can focus on big-picture, strategic thinking.
So rather than seeing RPA as a job killer, these IT workers welcome the opportunity to be freed from mundane tasks so they can spend more time using their brains.

“That shows the common narrative stating that IT Pros find smart automation a threat to their jobs, and that they are afraid of a machine takeover, are overblown. The reality is quite the opposite,” said Chris Boos, CEO for Arago. “Forward thinking CEOs, CIOs and HR executives need to be aware of the positive impact smart automation will have on their companies.”
Other key findings from the survey include:

Eighty-five percent said that intellectually stimulating and learning/development activities are most important to job satisfaction
The two most preferred tasks of IT professionals are delivering innovative technology and solutions (72%) and modernizing existing technology (63%).

Indicating they would welcome RPA and other IT tools for mundane tasks, the IT workers said they prefer not spending time doing trouble ticket documentation and reporting (59%) and routine maintenance (36%).

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